Legion of Super-Heroes v4 #73 (1995)
written by Tom Peyer & Tom McCraw
pencils by Lee Moder
cover by Alan Davis
Live Wire has been looking for his brother since the beginning of the Reboot; it’s time to finally meet him.
If you’re curious how much Workforce pays, Live Wire got exactly 37,562 credits out of his short membership.
Apparently he’s not good with money. No wonder that in the previous continuity Saturn Girl was the one managing the family farm.
Once he demonstrates he has lightning powers, everyone mistakes him for his criminal brother.
Since it’s a chance to actually find his brother, Live Wire goes along with it.
During the entire interrogation sequence, Live Wire doesn’t say a single word. This is really driving home the fact that Lightning Lord is a real scumbag.
However there’s a reason why Live Wire is not part of the Espionage Squad.
Accepting that his brother is criminally insane is hard to swallow, so Live Wire has convinced himself that it’s his powers that have made him this way.
Whether that’s the case or not will be examined next issue; right now, Lightning Lord makes his grandiose entrance.
Sorry, did I say grandiose? I meant murderous.
Live Wire’s sympathy only goes so far… as do his chances to stand up to his brother.
The Science Police informs Spark about this, but it doesn’t seem it’s public yet.
In other plots, Cosmic Boy is still having trouble leading the team and Brainiac 5 is continuing his experiments.
Brainiac’s experiments are causing Mon-El’s ghost to flicker in and out of existence!
Saturn Girl confirms THAT is what she saw when the Stargate collapsed at the end of the Annual.
The idea that Mon-El needs any help at all is hard to accept for Triad, since he’s worshipped as a god on her planet.
That’s when they run into Spark rushing to help her brother. Considering the current state of the Legion, no wonder she doesn’t ask for help.
The series is not being subtle about Cosmic Boy’s leadership. Must have been rough to read this on a monthly basis without knowing where he would end up.
In the final pages, Lightning Lord has taken his brother to the planet where they got powers.
If you had doubts that Lightning Lord is bad: he’s here to slaughter the animals that gave him powers.
Also, he’s not exaggerating when he says that they “bleed lightning”… this will come up later in the series.
Well that’s one way to power up.
He’s so unhinged that he’s willing to kill his siblings just to get more power.
And we end with the revelation that yes, things CAN get worse.
Legion significance: 4/10
Lightning Lord is not as important as a character in the Reboot as he was in the previous continuity, but he will show up. It’s impossible to see it now, but the Reboot will turn him into sort of a sympathetic character. Eventually.
It’s also the beginning of the storyline that will bring back Mon-El.
Silver Age-ness: 0/10
Not really.
Does it stand the test of time? 9/10
Pretty standard for the Reboot, with almost nothing that would really need to change. I especially liked how the comic is not pulling any punches showing how bad Lightning Lord is, giving credence to the idea that Live Wire is leaning on his theory because he doesn’t want to deal with how messed up his brother is.
Who did it better?
The Reboot has an advantage that is almost unfair compared to the previous continuity: it actually knows where the characters will end up.
So it can introduce the lightning siblings and play up their relationship right from the start, whereas the original took a long time.
He was introduced in Superman #147 in an Adult Legion story, which retconned him into being Lightning Lad’s brother… and that’s before their sister was later added to the same origin.
Through the entire original continuity, Lightning Lord was just a maniacal supervillain without much depth… there was a little of it during 5YL, but too little too late to make me believe his redemption arc.
Both Lightning Lord’s first true appearance and even his eventual redemption, in my opinion, are vastly superior in the Reboot.
Although if you want the truly deranged version of Lightning Lord, the Volume 3 version is still the most entertaining.
The panel with Triad talking to Cosmic Boy suddenly has me wondering how the clothing on Triad’s home planet works – not just the mechanics of how it splits, but how the fashion industry copes when every outfit has to be two-toned but also look good in both of the single tones.
In Triad’s origin in Legionnaires # 24, what little we see of other Carggites suggests that each of their bodies wears the same clothing. Lu was unique in that her bodies had separate personalities, which was considered a mental illness on Cargg. In one panel, Lu’s aunt is shown encouraging her three selves to dress differently, suggesting this was unique to them. Therefore, it was up to R.J. Brande to foot the bill for costume variations.
Garth’s rationalization that the lightning powers caused Mekt’s insanity was one of the most moving and human parts of his characterization.
It is fascinating how these stories “end up” where they are supposed to go but arrive at those endings in a different way than in the preboot. This account, for example, develops Garth’s complicated relationship with Mekt–a combination of brotherly love and hero worship combined with the inescapable realization that Mekt is a horrible person–a relationship glossed over in the preboot.
yes, garth-boy. Horrible people DO exist, sometime…